The attorney general ordered editor Nasab's arrest on blasphemy charges after the religious adviser to President Hamid Karzai, Mohaiuddin Baluch, filed a complaint about his magazine. "I took the two magazines and spoke to the Supreme Court chief, who wrote to the attorney general to investigate," Baluch told The Associated Press.

An investigation into the leak of a CIA officer's identity erupted,
with one reporter compelled to testify about his confidential source, another jailed for 85 days before she testified, and a high-level White House aide indicted on federal charges of perjury, false statements, and obstruction of justice. Confidentiality of sources was under attack in a number of other U.S. cases as well. In New Orleans, authorities restricted media access and harassed journalists in several incidents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And in Washington, D.C., federal auditors concluded that the Bush administration had broken the law by disseminating "covert propaganda."